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Image Description: An Amazon warehouse
We’ve all heard horror stories about how warehouse employees in the Amazon are treated: the insanely short lunches, the deprivation of human contact, and the strict bathroom breaks, to name a few. This is terrible, but the solution is to not stop buying from Amazon. Rather, it needs to be resolved with public pressure on Amazon, as well as increased pressure on the government to tighten legislation on the treatment of its employees.
Some argue that by buying from Amazon we are directly complicit in perpetuating the suffering and mistreatment of its employees. Indeed, Amazon treats its employees very hard. One particular story that struck me was that of employees forced to pee in bottles or completely give up bathroom breaks because the satisfaction demands were too high. This is definitely a terrible problem that needs to be solved. However, it is unclear whether this so-called exploitation is as serious as it appears. The shocking reality is that there is a shortage of jobs, let alone decent jobs in the labor market. The fact that Amazon workers choose to work there even in bad conditions means that the alternative – being unemployed or getting a worse paid job – is worse. Even in the best of cases where we could get rid of jobs with such bad working conditions, this won’t necessarily improve the lives of the people currently working at Amazon.
Furthermore, discontinuing our Amazon product purchase is unlikely to change anything. First, there’s a collective action problem: even if you personally stop buying from Amazon, other people are likely to continue, creating very few changes. Second, the boycotts have historically been rather ineffective. There are countless examples of this: the Facebook boycott, for example, after Cambridge Analytica and the data scandal, was a failure even though many people participated. This is because the products or services of these large tech companies are too pervasive to stop using them. So an Amazon boycott is very unlikely to be successful or create any change.
It is intuitively wrong to impose a strict moral code on students living on a small loan.
Others argue that Jeff Bezos is ridiculously rich as a result of our buying from Amazon and that this accumulation of wealth is unwarranted. However, this is an unfortunate by-product of capitalism. We want its products and are willing to pay for it, because Amazon gives us a lot of convenience and choice that cannot be replicated by other companies. As a result, Bezos becomes rich and dirty. To tackle the excesses of capitalism, the government and lawmakers should step in, regulate and redistribute profits. The US government could, for example, enact a minimum tax rate on large companies across the country to prevent Amazon from exploiting the tax differences between states and paying virtually nothing. The amount of money Bezos is receiving, therefore, shouldn’t be an argument against buying from Amazon.
Also, many of us are students living on tight budgets. It’s okay to say that the richest people have a moral obligation to buy fair trade products and avoid making big business rich, but most of us can’t afford it for all of our purchases. It is intuitively wrong to impose a strict moral code on students living on a small loan.
Due to the problematic workplace culture imposed by Amazon, there are more effective ways to address it. One solution is public pressure: the stories we hear about bathroom breaks, for example, can inspire collective action. This appears to be increased legislation and pressure on the government through voting and the expression of keen interest in the treatment of such employees. Even though many governments (especially the US government) are tied to lobbyists, the way large corporations get their way is because they have very specific issues that the general public doesn’t care enough to vote on. If interest is concentrated enough, the government would always prioritize voters and promote some change.
The shocking reality is that there is a shortage of jobs, let alone decent jobs in the labor market.
Amazon treats its employees badly and there is certainly a lot for improvement. However, it has undeniably brought us a lot of convenience, with a huge range of products on hand and next day delivery for those of us who are procrastinators. To change Amazon’s business practices, the solution is not to stop buying its products. Rather, we should sign open letters, retweet videos and stories about employee maltreatment, and get the government to acknowledge that this is an issue that voters care very much about. This should be our most important role as students.
Image Credit: Government of Scotland, CreativeCommons
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